Focus

The Last Straw

Panic consumes me before I'm even fully awake. I remember that someone was coming to help me. Right, right. I took too much of everything and my body went into a meltdown during band practice when I tried to get away. A distorted face swims around in my mind. Shit. Amanda is back too. What happened? Where am I? I don't remember getting home, so I must not be home, unless Calum came to help me. My entire body is stiff and immobile and my head is pounding. I thought that once the drugs wore off maybe I would feel better. Guess I was wrong. Instead, I awake with a jolt and immediately start retching. My eyes open into darkness as I cough and splutter, but my throat is too dry and nothing comes up. I can physically feel how pale my face is. There's a few dim lights flickering overhead but I can't really see past my own body as I whip my head side to side frantically trying to take in my surroundings. Like a delayed reaction, a throbbing pain forms at the back of my head, and suddenly I remember. Somebody hit me. I was kidnapped. Terror that I've never felt before causes my stomach to writhe around inside me and I struggle to stand up when a tie chafes around my wrists and forces me back into the chair I'm sitting in. Whoever took me tied me to a chair in a dark room. What is this, James Bond? Of course I have to try, so I struggle uselessly against the ropes that restrain me. They burn around my hands and I cry out in pain. My legs are tied as well, and a long cord is wrapped around my waist securing my whole body to the seat; I soon discover that my chair is bolted to the floor. I'm completely stuck.

Okay, first of all, I'm scared out of my mind. Adrenaline makes people do crazy, stupid things, but I try my best to keep my calm and ignore my rapidly beating heart. The after effects of the crystals left me extremely disoriented, and even though it's been a few hours at least, the room spins and whirls around me and I can barely focus on one spot at a time. I've gotten so used to the constant cycle of high that the second everything wore off, I went into an almost immediate withdrawal. I can tell because instead of just shaking, my body is beginning to go into an almost full on seizure. The chair rattles as every muscle in my body shakes violently and drool flows out of my mouth and over my chin. I feel like someone set fire to every nerve in my body. I need some powder. I need to smoke. I need a roll or something, anything, because if I don't get something in my system soon I have no doubt in my mind that I will die here. I can barely function or think, and I have to get out of this room before whoever took me comes back and does their worst to me.

A horrified feeling creeps up my spine. What if I can't get out in time? What are they going to do to me? I've seen Taken enough times to know that whatever the reason they had for taking me, it's not going to be good. Amanda knows something was wrong when I ran away from her. Maybe she caught up to me and saw whoever did this. Yes. That's it, she saw who it was and called the cops and they're already on their way. I'm going to be fine. If that's not the answer, then I don't know what's going to happen to me at this point because I've paid for all my business in full; none of my dealers should be chasing after me. I'm completely clean...go figure. So what's going on? I mean, here I am, strapped to a chair, alone in some random building. No one has come busting out of a back room to demand a ransom. I'm not hooked up to an operating table, so I doubt they're planning to use me for some sick medical experiment. I don't think my stomach could take it if that was the case. I think back to every horror film I've ever seen. When there's a scene with a helpless victim tied to a chair, I always get really annoyed that they don't put forth a bigger effort to escape - most of the time, I point out obvious solutions that would free them from whatever's trapping them. Okay, so now I'm a horror movie...there must be something lying around, or something sharp that I have on me that I can use to get out. Unfortunately the ropes run the length of my entire forearm from the tip of my elbow to the crook of the inner part of my thumb, leaving my arms completely immobile. This person also tied one of my legs to each of the legs of the chair from my knee down to around my ankle. A brown belt is also looped securely on the outer part of the rope around each leg. Man, whoever this psycho is, they really wanna make sure I don't get away. Normally in movies there are a lot of loopholes that would allow someone to easily slip free from their ties. I'm not seeing any loopholes here.